Re-blogging

I have made a wonderful discovery. In the world of blogdom, when you blatantly steal material from another blogger, you don't call that stealing. No, you call that "re-blogging." Re-blogging may be exceeded only by the number of term papers copied entirely from Internet sources. It's that popular. Granted, some blog-writers take offense at having their material distributed in that manner, but I say that if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then out-right theft is pure adulation.

Now, having said that, most of what follows is re-blogged (see, isn't that a kinder gentler phrase?) from "Stuff Christians Like" posted by Jon Acuff. If you don't already follow his blog, you should. There. I feel better already.

The topic is the best ways to quickly identify a Christian urban legend email:

1. Fwd.
Although technically, those three letters mean the email has been “forwarded” to you from someone else, I want to redefine that. All too often if you see Fwd, what it really means is the email is going to be “Fake, Weird, Dumb.” Beware the arrival of an email that has “Fwd” in the subject line.

2. Crazy subject line.
If you see the word, “Horrible” or the phrases, “If you’re a Christian, you must read this,” or “Fourth horseman spotted outside Cleveland,” go ahead and delete that email immediately.

3. The phrase, “I never send these out.”
Yes you do. Stop saying that. This is the telltale sign of a serial urban legend fan. They always try to tell you that they never send these types of emails out but this one, this one is too serious to ignore. It’s the equivalent of the date you go on where a guy or girl says, “I’m not crazy, seriously, it’s not like I’m crazy.” Yes you are, that is what crazy people always say.

4. Prayer.
I think it’s awesome that we can use email to share prayer requests. I think it’s less awesome that we use it to spread urban legends about prayer. I got one recently about the National Day of Prayer being cancelled. It was so full of inaccuracies that it made my teeth hurt. The text was wrong, the photo in it was misleading, the information was shady. It was essentially the email equivalent of the officiating in the World Cup. Bottom line, if you get an exclamation laden !!!! prayer email be very careful.

5. The claim is gigantic.
The bigger the claim, the greater the chance is that it’s fake. A few months ago someone sent me an email from “James Dobson” that said all Sunday worship services on the radio or television were about to be removed from the air unless we signed a petition. Chances are, if thousands of gospel programs are going to be instantly removed from both radio and television, the first time you hear of this won’t be in an email from your friend “BillKingBeliever777.” Also, there are scams aimed at Christians that ask for your email address in order to keep prayer in our country. They just want your email. Avoid these like one of the plagues. The frogs for instance.


6. I checked this on Scopes.
I'm sorry. If it is this big a deal, and it is true, it would have been on CNN two days ago. Nobody can deal trash as quickly as CNN.

And then, of course, there is always the sender. If you get emails from certain individuals, you simply know that it is going to fit in one or all of the above categories. There must be a brotherhood of them, trolling for disaster and alerting all their fellow alarmists. It's sort of like stamp collecting, only instead of finding the 1918 Inverted Jenny Aircraft, it's a pending disaster to Christendom that they haven't ever forwarded before. Be still my beating heart!

For these people, the only solution is the "twit filter." In Gmail, that is under the link "Create a filter." Try, it. You'll love it. Only you wouldn't put my name in there would you? On rare occasions I have some really important, gigantic, Scopes-approved FWDs to send you.